Hôtel de Meurice, Paris
,
4th September (1880).
Is it such pain to you when people say what they ought not to say about me? But when do they say what they ought to say about anything? Nearly everything I have ever done or said is as much above the present level of public understanding as the Old Man is above the Waterhead.
We have had the most marvelous weather thus far, and have seen Paris [Pg 46] better than ever I've seen it yet,—and to-day at the Louvre we saw the Casette of St. Louis, the Coffre of Anne of Austria, the porphyry vase, made into an eagle, of an old Abbé Segur, or some such name. All these you can see also, you know, in those lovely photographs of Miss Rigbye's, if you can only make out in this vile writing of mine what I mean.
But it is so hot. I can scarcely sit up or hold the pen, but tumble back into the chair every half minute and unbutton another button of waistcoat, and gasp a little, and nod a little, and wink a little, and sprinkle some eau de Cologne a little, and try a little to write a little, and forget what I had to say, and where I was, and whether it's Susie or Joan I'm writing to; and then I see some letters I've never opened that came by this morning's post, and think I'd better open them perhaps; and here I find in one of them a delightful account of the quarrel that goes on in this weather between the nicest elephant in the Zoo' and his keeper, because he won't come out of his bath. I saw them at it myself, when I was in London, and saw the elephant take up a stone and throw it hard against a door which the keeper was behind,—but my friend writes, "I must believe from what I saw that the elephant knew he would injure the man with the stones, for he threw them hard to the side of him, and then stood his ground; when, however, he threw water and wetted the man, he plunged into the bath to avoid the whip; not fearing punishment when he merely showed what he could do and did not."
The throwing the stone hard at the door when the keeper was on the other side of it, must have been great fun for him!
I am so sorry to have crushed this inclosed scrawl. It has been carried about in my pocket to be finished, and I see there's no room for the least bit of love at the bottom. So here's a leaf full from the Bois de Boulogne, which is very lovely; and we drive about by night or day, as if all the sky were only the roof of a sapphire palace set with warm stars.